


refugee

by becausemagnets



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1463116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becausemagnets/pseuds/becausemagnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>once in Brooklyn, once during the war, never after that (because the war never ended)</p>
            </blockquote>





	refugee

i. 

The very first time was before Bucky went to London. Without him. After he rescued him, yet again. 

His arm is drunk heavy around Steve’s back, but he’s warm and Steve is used to it at this point. Drinking is how Bucky has historically dealt with anything he was afraid of. And although he’d never admit it, Steve could see the fear behind his eyes the first time he showed up in the khakis. _Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes of the 107th_. Steve had wanted to get drunk, too, especially since all of the boys--men--at the bar, had mostly been shipping out with Bucky in the morning. And leaving Steve behind on shore. But Bucky never really gave him a choice, winking at a girl across the bar and downing whiskey before Steve even had a drink in hand. 

Bucky turns and presses his face into Steve’s neck, laughing lightly, making Steve’s hair stand on end, almost sending them both staggering back into the street. “Easy, soldier.” He moves Bucky’s arm from his waist to his shoulders, hoping it’ll steady them both, but Bucky just slumps against him, laughing still. “Bucky, come on. Big day tomorrow. Let’s get going.” Bucky puts his warm warm _impossibly_ warm arm back around Steve’s waist and lurches forward, still laughing under his breath. 

Steve gets Bucky through the doorway of his bedroom, plans to leave it there. Sleep on his couch, or something. But Bucky grabs the front of his shirt and pulls him through. “It’s my last night in Brooklyn for a long time, Rogers.” His voice is low, breathy, and Steve’s stomach clenches, sinks like a stone. 

“Yeah.” His own breath comes out barely more than a whisper, chest hitching as Bucky pulls him closer. 

Bucky tilts his head down, presses his lips against the shell of Steve’s ear, whispers, “You wanna make it worth my while, kid?” Steve wants to tell him he doesn’t know how, that he doesn’t know anything about this, but Bucky answers the questions he’s not asking, like always. “Hey, it’s okay. I’ll show ya.” He grins, one sided, all teeth, and keeps tugging at Steve’s collar until Bucky’s knees give when he hits the bed.

Steve half hovers over him, breathing hard, and Bucky laughs that quiet laugh again, tucking a stray strand of Steve’s hair behind his ears. “You ever touch yourself before?” Bucky’s already got a hand cupping himself through his pants and Steve tries hard not to watch Bucky’s fingers massaging, the way his hips are starting to climb upwards, the little lift in Bucky’s smile, the catches in his breath. Steve swallows hard, shakes his head. “Not ever?” Steve shakes his head again. “Steve.” He laughs and then he’s undoing his belt with shaking hands, unfastening his pants in one quick motion, his hand disappearing for a moment. “I’ll show you, okay? I’ll show you and then you can do it, too.” 

Bucky draws himself out with a hiss, half-hard in his hand. Steve tries to back away, lift himself off of Bucky, but Bucky grabs his wrist with his left hand, and shakes his head, chewing on his lip a little. His eyes are watery and lost and desperate and then his lips are half parted and his hand is moving so slowly, his chest so fast, Steve can’t look away and Steve can’t move. Bucky is making sure he’s watching. He takes his hand off for a second and Steve must make a sound because Bucky laughs before licking the palm of his hand. He’s going faster, breathing harder, and Steve can’t tell if he’d rather look at his eyes or his hand or the little line of skin just above his pants and below his hiked up shirt. “Think you can do it, Steve?” 

Steve’s hard. Bucky can feel it, Steve’s practically sitting on his leg, but Steve shakes his head. “I-I think I need more of a demonstration.” He presses himself tighter against Bucky. 

Bucky laughs for real this time, bright and loud like he has since they were kids, and sits up, hand still wrapped around himself. “My hand? On you?” Steve sucks in a breath, loud, harsh, and then Bucky is sitting up and for once Bucky is shorter than Steve, so he pulls Steve’s head down and kisses him long and hard, all wet tongue and wet lips and when Steve swallows, it feels like he’s swallowed fire. Bucky is undoing Steve’s belt, pops the button clean off his pants, and his hand is roaming down Steve’s stomach lazily. He breaks off the kiss and smiles at Steve with red lips, flashing eyes, and then his hand is around Steve’s cock and it’s like an electric shock straight through him. His knees buckle into Bucky a little and Bucky laughs again, but he doesn’t stop, going just as slowly as he had on himself. 

“Can you--” Steve’s voice is high, desperate, nearly a whine, so he stops talking and bends down to kiss Bucky again, pressing them both back on the bed. Bucky’s hand starts moving faster and Steve feels like he can barely breath, pressing his face into Bucky’s shoulder, his hands flat fists on the mattress. “F-faster,” he breathes into Bucky’s ear and Bucky laughs and slows down, rewarded by Steve’s whimper, before he follows whispered orders.  
Steve comes in Bucky’s hand not long after, whispering Bucky’s name over and over again into his shoulder, trying to make sure they both won’t forget. Not Sergeant Barnes, not Sergeant Barnes, not Sergeant Barnes. _Bucky Bucky Bucky_. 

ii. 

The second time is after he’s become Captain America. Well, maybe because he’s become Captain America. 

It’s not immediately after Steve gets him back. Steve didn’t really expect it to be. He doesn’t look like the same person, so why would Bucky assume that he is? And Bucky--isn’t. In several important ways, he’s not the kid from Brooklyn anymore and he can’t protect Steve from what’s coming next and everything they had to define each other by is gone, so of course, Bucky just needs time and space. So Steve gives him time and space. It doesn’t take long before Bucky forces his way into his tent in the middle of the night, sitting cross-legged near the entrance with bags under his eyes, taking up space like he’d always been there. 

“How’d you know I was alive?” He sounds older than Steve remembers. Older and somehow much more vulnerable. 

“I didn’t.” 

“Why then? Why’d you come all that way?” 

Steve gets up and crosses the tent to sit cross-legged in front of him. “Wouldn’t you?” 

And Bucky kisses him. Slowly, like he’s trying to just dip his toes in Steve’s pool, remind himself that there was a time before the war, but Steve hooks his hands behind Bucky’s head, pulls him in closer, swallowing the muffled protest. Bucky tastes like smoke and Steve feels like he’s on fire, but he keeps kissing him, swallowing fire in hopes that he’ll find the old Bucky under there somewhere. There are tears on Bucky’s face when he pulls back and Steve instinctively reaches up to wipe them away, but Bucky slaps his wrist away, shakes his head. “I’m not worth coming back for, Steve. I’m not worth saving.” 

Steve crushes their mouths together, sending Bucky sprawling backwards. He wants to drown in him, tell him everything that imperfect words can’t. The hallowing in his chest when he heard what had happened to the 107th. The white hot fear when he hadn’t seen Bucky with the other soldiers. The certain knowledge that he’d risked his life for a ghost. Until he’d seen Bucky.

He pulls back and Bucky’s not crying, he’s panting, and he grabs at Steve’s collar. “You’re, uh, you’re a bit bigger than the last time we did this, but…” He trails off, the same crooked, one-sided grin on his lips, even if it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He runs his hands up and down Steve’s chest before ripping open his shirt, kissing every inch he can get his mouth on. Both of his hands are tangled in Steve’s hair and he’s moaning lightly against Steve’s skin, leaving little marks that disappear almost as quickly as Bucky puts them there. He gets a hand between Steve’s legs and laughs lightly against his skin. “Bigger there, too, huh?” 

Steve blushes, sits up and pulls away, but Bucky scrambles after him, practically sitting in his lap. “I like you either way, Rodgers. Just in case you forgot.” He brushes his knuckles over the front of Steve’s tented pants, licking his bottom lip. He pops the fasten in one quick motion, moaning louder than Steve when he gets his hand around him. Steve angles his hips up so that his leg presses right against Bucky and Bucky moans again, his eyes lighting up just the way Steve remembers, half-roguish and half-boyish and all Bucky, and then Bucky is rubbing himself against Steve’s leg in time with the pumping of his steel grip and it’s sharper, better than he ever remembers Bucky feeling. 

“Steve, Steve, Steve.” His voice is starting to carry, so Steve reaches up and covers his mouth, pressing his head into Bucky’s chest, listening to his sharp, quick breaths and the quickening thud of his heart. “ _Steve Steve Steve_ ,” he keeps groaning against Steve’s hand, his mouth hot and wet and then he’s drawing one of Steve’s fingers into his mouth, two, three, sucking as he rocks against Steve’s leg, never slowing his hand, not once. Bucky comes first, biting Steve’s knuckles hard enough to draw blood, and Steve comes practically sobbing, knowing full well that even if Bucky thinks it’s the other way around, Bucky is always always always the one doing the rescuing. 

iii. 

There is no third time. 

It’s raining and it’s cold and Steve isn’t exactly sure what the next step is. He’s had his ear to the ground, but by now Bucky--the Winter Soldier, whoever--has got to be a master of disappearing. Natasha’s in the wind and she didn’t seem much interested in helping him to begin with and SHIELD’s resources are practically defunct at this point, all over the internet and in the hands of civilians. Sam is trying, but his contacts are about as useless as Steve’s own. If Bucky--the Winter Soldier--doesn’t want to be found, he won’t. 

Until he shows up at Steve’s door, soaked to the bone. His hair is cut, underneath the hood, and he’s wearing a huge sweatshirt, the sleeve pulled down on his left side to cover up the metal. His jaw is set, still, that hard line that Steve barely recognizes, but there’s something softer in his eyes, a pleading, that hadn’t been there before. “I remember.” 

Steve moves out of the doorway and Bucky comes inside, his shoulders drawn up tight, and he turns around fast, faces Steve. Like he doesn’t like having Steve at his back. “You remember.” 

“Not--much. Not everything. I remember you. I--on the bridge. After that, I remembered you.” Steve nods mutely, crosses his arms over his chest. Every part of him wants to run at Bucky, tell him he’ll remind him, that everything is all right now that they’re together, but he remembers what Sam said. And Fury. And he remembers the helicarrier. And you’re my mission. Steve doesn’t believe that Bucky is gone--has never truly believed it--but he also knows that the Bucky he knew is. Whatever they did to him, whatever remained of who he used to be, is the not same thing and Steve has learned enough about life after waking up that no matter how hard he tries, he can’t close his eyes and wish things back the way they were. 

“I thought. I don’t know where else to go.” Bucky takes a tentative step toward him, and then another, and another, and their mouths smash together so hard Steve hits the door hard enough to shake the frame. Bucky’s arm--his right arm--comes up to pull at Steve’s hair and then Bucky’s licking and biting his way down Steve’s neck, marking it up all the way to his jaw. Steve hisses and tries to move away, but Bucky grips his wrist with the metal arm, the bionic gears shifting and making that sick, inhuman gear sound, and he’s stuck with Bucky’s (god he hopes it’s Bucky) tongue against his pulse. Steve tries to kick out at him, but ends up wrapping his legs around Bucky’s waist, swinging his hips so they both end up on the floor with a thud, Bucky’s teeth locked on Steve’s throat the whole time. 

Bucky’s whispering against his skin, but Steve can’t catch it, so he cants his hips to press himself tighter against Bucky, tilts his head down and catches Bucky’s lips before he bites down again. Bucky’s moaning--practically growling--in his mouth and his hands, both of them, settle like steel on Steve’s waist, holding him there as he grinds up, putting all of his weight under him to snap his hips into Steve. Steve tries to grab on to him, but he grabs the metal arm and it’s freezing, nothing like Bucky’s skin, and he must jerk back, recoil, something, because Bucky is snarling and then Steve is slammed on his back hard enough to knock the wind out of his chest. He swings his legs out and wraps them around Bucky’s waist again, tightens all of his muscles to hold Bucky away until he can breathe, but that bionic arm twists at his thigh and then Bucky is pulling him up, holding him by the hair again, marking up his neck again, tasting his skin like he’ll remember his whole life by the sweat beaded up just under Steve’s collarbone. Bucky walks down the hallway with Steve wrapped around his waist, probably the only man in the world who can do it, but when he makes it to the bedroom, Steve flips off of him, delivers a solid kick to the center of Bucky’s chest before he lands on his own feet, glowering. 

“Why didn’t you look for me?” It’s barely a whisper, but it nearly floors Steve. It’s so quiet he can hear both of them breathing, hard, fast, quick, practically hissing in every breath. He watches the rise and fall of Bucky’s chest, a hollow echoing sound in his ears, and then Bucky clenches both of his fists, his bionic arm making that harsh, gear shifting sound again, loud enough to set Steve’s teeth on edge. “ _Why didn’t you look for me?_ ” This time it’s practically a scream and then Bucky’s charging at him, a sharp knee to the stomach, and Steve keels over, pulling Bucky down on top of him like a wild animal. He tries to elbow, punch, kick, buck his way out from underneath, but Bucky practically sets his metal arm into the floor and rides it out until Steve gives up. “Why didn’t you look for me, Rogers?” 

“I thought you were dead, Buck.” 

He watches something fall in Bucky’s eyes and then there’s cold metal against his throat, a metallic tightening, gear shift sound that signals Bucky’s about three seconds away from crushing his windpipe. But instead of the metal fingers tightening, Bucky lowers his face and presses his mouth against Steve’s, sucking up the little air he has left. Biting his lip, sucking on his tongue, grinding his hips down on Steve as hard and tight as his hand is on Steve’s trachea. 

“I waited for you. That’s what I remember. When it started. I waited and I believed that Captain fucking America would come back and save me.” His voice is like pure venom and Steve chokes on it, drowns, and then Bucky steps off of him, pulls his hood back up, and leaves. Without another word. 

Steve had been right to never feel like anyone’s hero.


End file.
